When did I start paying attention to politics.

A question by 'Sundance' editor of 'The Conservative Treehouse'

Wow, why me?

Want to know how a child can grow up decades faster than normal? Be a military brat!

My Dad was in the Air Force. When I was in the second grade, in October of 1962, Dad was stationed at Davis-Monthan AFB, Tucson Arizona, I was seven. In my world, within days, my neighborhood turned into a ghost town, the school bus was empty, and I had 1 other kid in my class. Good thing he was a buddy, another Brat. The folks of Tucson left the city, because they lived next to the Strategic Air Command, (SAC), the spear of our nuclear weapons delivery, the B-52 bomber. It was the Cuban Missile crisis, and civilians figured we were a top 3 target, for a nuclear attack, so they left town. For weeks B-52's took off 24/7, every takeoff made my house shake like an earthquake, glasses falling of the table, it was scary. Our Nuclear Bomb alert at school, seemed silly, 2 of us under our desk, while the teacher was tugging on a bottle, inside her purse.

Dad got tired of being an E-6 and went to school, in Colorado and Orlando, Fla. to learn maintaining the guidance system for the world's first nuclear tipped cruise missile, named the Mace. The Air Forces answer to protect Germany from a million t-34 Russian tanks sitting on the border of Europe. After Dad finished school, I had my first ride on a commercial 707 Jet Airliner to Frankfurt, Germany. We traveled to a base in western Germany, Hahn AFB. and Mace headquarters. Just a year had gone buy, we live in a German village. It was a hotel, movie theater and a ghasthaus (bar). On November 2nd, 1963, My Mom ,sister and I watched an American Hercules movie, with German subtitles. we had to walk thru the bar, to get to our room. The silence was deafening, some people were sobbing. John F. Kennedy had been shot and died in Dallas, Texas. JFK was a hero to the West Germans, when he made a famous speech at the Berlin Wall. JFK was a hero of a divided country by Communism, in this little village, where just under 20 years earlier, American forces overwhelmed the Nazi Army on it's way to Berlin. At the wall President Kennedy, quoted in his famous speech at the 'Berlin Wall'

"And there are some who would say in Europe and elsewhere, we can work with the Communists. Let them come to Berlin. Ich bin ein Berliner"

We all sat together and mourned the death of our President. 2 Years later, My Dad brought me to Berlin.

In the spring, I had turned 12, finishing the 5th grade, when we crossed the border of the 2 Germanies, West to East. We were stopped at the border, Dad went into the Western German, HQ, and checked in. We had 106 KM to Berlin. The Communist HQ was next, East German police, with their brown uniforms, with a bright purple trim. Dad got his orders, don't stop, look straight ahead and be on time. They were timing our journey. It was a pretty desolate drive, but there were soldiers walking in the woods near the road, in fool Combat gear, doing what? Scaring the hell out of me. We arrived at the end of the 'ride'. Dad informed the West German's what he observed, and the East German's, he was on time and saw nothing. Then we drove into a robust busy city, West Berlin. The next day we went the wall. There was a road that traveled along the wall, where buildings, along the wall were gone except where the front of the building was part of the wall. There were wreath's on the wall. some with a framed picture of a person within the wreath. We stopped at a spot, where the was an elevated platform, with steps that aloud us to see over the Berlin Wall, to the eastern side. A wreath was in front of the platform. There was a picture of a young man. I had and still have this magazine of thWall and this place at the wall. It was the picture of a young man named Peter Fechter, he was 18. We took the steps up to the platform, where I witnessed Communism in it's true form. On the other side looked like 'Omaha Beach' at Normandy. Metal H beam barricades, rows of barbwire and some size of a football field of no man's land. There were towers placed within shooting range of each other, with guards and mounted machine guns.

The young man tried to escape, so desperate, he ran the gauntlet toward the wall where I stood. As he ran the guards shot him numerous times, yet he somehow reached the wall. He laid by the wall, cried for help for 50 minutes, to weak to climb. He laid there bleeding to death, while the East German guards stayed put. Western guards gave him first aid packets, but he was to weak, to use them. As he died the East German guards finally came and carried him away. I looked at pictures of Peter, as I read about his fate. He gave his life, running for freedom from Communism.